Prosecution of electoral offences complex, says Osun REC

From Lateef Dada, Osogbo

The Osun State Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Dr. Mutiu Agboke, has said that the prosecution of electoral offences is a complex one and that is why much has not been achieved by the commission.

He explained that the commission only acted on the case file presented to it by the Investigative Police Officer who would have recommended a suspect for prosecution.

Speaking with journalists during a courtesy visit to the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Osogbo, at the weekend, Agboke disclosed that only one person was recommended for the commission to prosecute for the 2023 elections.

Asked why the commission has not been prosecuting election offenders, Agboke said “The issue of prosecution of election offenders is a very complex situation. By section 145 or 146 of the Electoral Act INEC is the one that has the statutory responsibility to prosecute election offenders.

“But IPO’s job is to do the preliminary investigation, visit the scene of the crime, get the details of the accused person, put everything together, then the file will be duplicated, which means the entire investigation processes are completed and the file is handed over to the prosecutor.

“In Osun today, I can tell you now that we have one prosecution to carry out,” Agboke said.

He noted that the commission has improved technologically in the electioneering process, saying that the only thing that remains manual from 2011 till date is the actual casting of the ballot.

“The registration is technology, the accreditation is technology, the verification of accreditation is technology, even the process of uploading the results is technology,” Agboke said.

He noted that the IREV platform created by the commission is misinterpreted, saying “IREV is not a platform for the collation. The actual collation is at the collation centre but we want you to have access to see what we are doing, that is why we upload it at each stage, but people wanted to use that opportunity as a collation platform, and that was what generated all the noises you have heard in the last election,” Agboke added.

He assured that INEC will continue to deepen the process with the use of technology, noting that the commission is working towards deploying new technologies to further improve the process.